Lynchmere Common - It's all going green

Everything's going green, or is that growing green. In just a few weeks so much has changed on the commons. The brown colours of winter have burst through the riot of spring colour and now are moving into the mass of green-ness that is summer. It seems much harder to take good pictures as everything just turns out green.

Now that there is plenty of lush vegetative growth the cows have been let loose on the commons. They have been off over the winter to let the vegetation recover and avoid overgrazing.



This year the cattle on the commons are very young and extremely inquisitive. They are attracted to noise and activity. While I was splitting wood and then setting off the charcoal bins on Thursday evening they browsed around me for a couple of hours.

The Shetland cattle are very well suited to browsing the wide range of vegetation and seem as happy grazing through the young birch, gorse and holly as they are with grass. No doubt it's their background coming from the Shetland isles where they evolved to cope with little to forage other than heather during the harsh winters.

In our experience the cattle soon learn a wide and varied taste for plants on the common. We're very interested to learn which plants the cattle browse during the year and are encouraging everyone to record and tell us when they spot them grazing.


The afternoon was windy and sunny which pushed the smoke from the charcoal bins through the woods creating patterns with the light.




In preparation for a visit from a local primary school on Friday I decided to try making artist's charcoal using some willow cut recently. After packing tightly into a tin and binding with wire the box was placed into one of the bins once it was burning well.










As usual time flew by and it was close to sunset before I was able to shut down the last of the bins for the night. The intention was to be able to empty the bins for the school visit as well as set off another burn while they are there.